My first few months as a Junior Consultant
Before Joining
Before joining BCG I completed a DPhil in International Relations at the University of Oxford. Although there were many things that I enjoyed about my time as a DPhil student, I soon realised that I did not want to move into a career in academia and started looking around at other options. I was drawn to management consulting because of the variety it seemed to offer – working for short periods of time in different teams, with different clients and in different industries. Perhaps more importantly, however, I was impressed by the enthusiasm and friendliness of the BCG consultants that I met at recruiting presentations and careers fairs. And then I was lucky enough to be offered a job!
BCG were flexible on starting dates so I was able to join a year after accepting my offer. This gave me time to finish off my DPhil, with a few months left over to head home to New Zealand to get married. I also managed to fit in some stops along the way, spending time in Australia, Thailand and Canada before coming back to set up house in London.
Getting Started
I was quite nervous about starting work after so many years as a student. However, the nerves disappeared as soon as I met all the other new joiners and was immersed in training and office social events. My start date was lucky enough to coincide just two weeks before the annual Associate and Junior Consultant ski trip to Austria, which gave us plenty of opportunity to meet the other consultants in a (very!) relaxed environment. We also went straight from skiing in Austria to a week of training in Germany, which was a great way to meet people from other offices, but also provided us with some of the basic skills necessary to begin working on proper cases.
When I got back from training I was told that my first assignment would be a marketing project in the financial services industry - benchmarking the marketing and sales capabilities of different financial services companies. The work was interesting, and I was given a great deal of autonomy and almost full control over my workdays. I also, very quickly, learnt the value of the almighty PowerPoint slide as a way of presenting and conveying information!
Social BCG
BCG London is a very social office, and I have already had the opportunity to participate in a number of office events. A couple of months after I joined I attended a BCG 'Food Club' evening – an informal cooking lesson run by colleagues, followed by dinner, plenty of wine and good company. Just a month later I went to Zurich as part of the BCG London volleyball team, to compete in the annual European inter-office football and volleyball tournament weekend. In a few weeks time the whole office is being flown to Dubrovnik, Croatia, for our biannual office offsite weekend, which promises to be a lot of fun. And on top of this there are monthly office drinks and office Friday lunches that allow you to catch up with what people are working on, and get to know your colleagues in an informal way.
Case Work
Alongside all this socialising, I even managed to find time to do a bit more work. My second case was for a public sector client, evaluating the cost and feasibility of a new policy proposal. This was an eight week case with a relatively small team based out of the London office. The work was extremely interesting and at this stage I attended my first client meetings, which were both scary and a lot of fun.
Overall, the last few months have been both very challenging and very rewarding. I feel like I have learned a lot very quickly, but definitely still have a long way to go!